Cold Cups of Tea
by ButterfishJellyfly
Summary: Post-Reichenbach. John, with the help of his friends, is simply trying to get through the days. It isn't going well. Rated T for a possible addendum at a later date. Pre-slash.
1. Chapter 1

Prologue

Three years, today.

Days at the surgery. Dinners with Sarah, or Mrs. Hudson. Pints with Greg at the corner pub. Once in a very great while a text message from Mycroft that he would not answer: "How are you, John?"

And cups of tea. So many cups of tea.

John fitted his key into the door of 221B and leaned into the turning of it, and just like every other evening upon retuning home, he thought he should ask Mrs. Hudson for the oil can to to alleviate the tight squeak of the key fighting the lock. It had gotten worse over the years. But as soon as he got upstairs, as soon as he walked through the door of his flat on the second floor, he immediately forgot the oil can, the key, the lock, Mrs. Hudson. Coat cast across the couch, shoes kicked under his chair, John's chair, still situated so comfortably, so cozily, across from _his_ chair, black leather and bent chrome, daily carefully dusted by a meticulous Mrs. Hudson, who nonetheless continued to insist she was the landlady, not the housekeeper. He would make himself tea, in his clean kitchen, uncluttered by body parts or potentially explosive beakers of fluids. Make himself two cups of tea, in fact, one of which would go on the small table by his chair, the other on the small table by the chair across. As he drank his, slowly savoring the warmth, he watched the steam diminish as the other cup went cold.

He hadn't intended to keep the flat-_he_ had left him everything, and everything turned out to be quite a substantial something. A house in the country was quite in the range of his possibilities. But each time he went online to look at the listings, perched stiffly on the edge of his chair at the living room table, across from the always empty chair on the other side: "Charming country cottage, lovely garden, perfect for one person, or a couple," he could never get so far as making the call. "I couldn't leave Mrs. Hudson," he told Sarah, Greg, whoever might ask (though only they ever asked, really). "What would she do in that old house, knocking around all alone?"

"But John," Sarah said one almost-winter evening, the third year drawing to a close as they sat curled up with cups of tea on either end of her couch, "You know she'd find _other tenants_."

"Well, of course she could," he said. "But none of them are _me_, and I'm all she has left of _him."_

Wrapped in _his _dressing gown, later that same evening, John lay on the couch wet-faced and staring up at the ceiling, half-wishing there was a fire on the hearth, half-wishing it was not almost midnight so he could ask Mrs. Hudson to make him a cuppa, wholly wishing that when he got up out of bed in the morning the clock would have somehow turned back and _he_ would be knocking around in the kitchen, blowing up the microwave, pouring toxins into teacups, using the last of the milk.

"What made you think I could survive this?" he said, to the empty chair, to the skull, to the yellow smiling face on the wall.

But he had.


	2. Chapter 2

Escape

For the first two months of the first year, immediately following _his_ sudden and incomprehensible end, John left Mrs. Hudson with a phone number and the rent, took part of his strange new wealth, and traveled. He carried a camera instead of a gun and took photo after photo-The Eiffel Tower, the Colosseum, the Acropolis. Unoccupied photos of things, with no traveling companion to mug or point or grin as he snapped the shutter. Not that _he _would have done any of that, have stood for having his snap taken at all. "Pointless!" Still, John imagined _him_ in every image, as he flipped through them over his small cafe meals.

He walked for miles through European streets in cities with names he could not now remember, and sometimes his leg ached, but he ignored it knowing it was only grief and not pain he could alleviate with a cane or a paracetamol. He talked to no one, sent postcards back to the flat. He bought Mrs. Hudson a scarf in a tiny shop in Paris, the same color as the one _he_ always wore, that deep and variable blue. He would fall into this or that hotel bed, exhausted, sure that this would be the night that sleep took him-but it never did. He lay awake for hours, slept fitfully, woke sweating from terrible dreams of falling men coming to sudden halts on pavement.

When he returned, Mrs. Hudson wept over the scarf. "Such a lovely color," she said, smiling through her tears. " It's beautiful. Thank you, dear. Shall I make you a cuppa? Just this once?"

He let her, but only so he wouldn't have to go up alone. He sat at her kitchen table as she puttered around with the teapot and cups, his coat still on, his bag under his chair. "Have you done anything?" he said, and she knew what he meant.

"Not a thing. I've no idea what to do with any of it. I dusted, but that's all." They drank their tea and made small talk about the things he had seen, the places he had been, and by the time the cups were empty he felt more ready to face what was, or was not, at the top of the stairs.

"Remember," she said, "not a single thing. His bed not even made...I just couldn't bear it. You understand?" She looked up into his face as they walked up the stairs.

He hoisted his small bag over his shoulder. "I do. It's alright. I'll manage."

"Are you going to stay? You're going to stay, aren't you?"

She looked terribly fragile, though, really, she was one of the strongest women he had ever known-how could she not be to not only put up with _him, _but even, John guessed, love him. "Yes," he said. "I'm going to stay, and I'll take care of the things. It's fine. Fine."


	3. Chapter 3

Sarah

He tried, for awhile, that first year, to rekindle things with Sarah, to try to start fresh, build a new life now that he was not on call for _him _twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. They managed a few dates, awkward over candlelight and pasta and glasses of wine, making chat about the surgery, their patients, the weather. But-

"John?"

He startled into awareness, his fork twined with spaghetti halfway to his mouth. It was their third date, the one he hoped would show her he was more than just casually interested. "Oh, God, Sarah, sorry. What were you saying again? Just a bit fagged from a long day, I suppose. Mrs. Henderson and her bad knee really take it out of me." He smiled.

"A million miles away," Sarah smiled too, kindly, sadly.

"Mrs. Henderson and her knee?"

"No, John. You. A million miles away. I spend half the time we're out waiting for you to come back to me. You never really do." She sipped her wine and held up her hand as he began to sputter an apology. "It's all right, John, really. It hasn't been that long. I appreciate you trying, and I'm happy to keep you company, but I know it isn't going to go any further than this," she gestured at the table, the food, the restaurant, then laid her hand over his on the table. "And that is fine. Fine."

He shook his head, turning his hand to grip hers. "It's not, Sarah. I'm so sorry. Why don't we go back to the flat and have a cup of tea-in front of the fire, even."

"Nothing romantic," Sarah was firm.

"No, no," John waved to the waiter for the bill. "Just cozy."

John took Sarah's coat in the dark downstairs hallway at 221B and hung it on a hook at the foot of the stairs, then removed his own. "Mrs. Hudson," he called, "I'm home."

The elderly lady came out of her flat, wiping her floury hands on a pink apron. "Hello, dear." She took his coat out of his hands and hung it next to Sarah's. "And lovely to see you, Sarah." She kissed the younger woman's cheek. "No one's been to visit since John came back from his travels!"

Sarah looked at John. "You've been back at least two months."

He avoided her eyes. "I've been busy."

Mrs. Hudson stepped in, shoving the awkwardness to the side. "I've just made some biscuits, why don't you go start a fire and make some tea, and I'll bring you some in a bit? I'll knock first." She turned, not waiting for a reply, and walked back into her flat.

At the top of the stairs, John paused in front of the closed door, but said nothing. Turning the knob, he pushed the door open and gestured for Sarah to precede him into the room. Something about his face made her hesitate, made her feel as if she was intruding, entering a part of his life that was terribly private, but that he was willing to share with her-perhaps as an apology for his truncated efforts at courting. She stepped over the threshold.

"Oh, John," she said, unable to stop herself. "You haven't changed a _single thing_."

The skull, still on the mantel. _His_ computer on the living room work table, open. _His_ dressing gown tossed over the back of the couch. Papers and file folders scattered on every available surface. Sarah stepped further in, and saw the remains of some experiment, glass tubes and Bunsen burners, still set up on the kitchen table.

Looking closer, she observed that though the room was cluttered, it was dusted-cleaned. The things _he_ left behind were being carefully and intentionally maintained, _curated_ like a museum to the mind and body of a single man, occupied by its curator. "Dear God, John," she said, looking at him with eyes full of pity. "Have you moved anything?"

"I have," he said, looking at the floor between his feet, for all the world like a schoolboy caught out at something he shouldn't have been doing. "I have," he repeated. "Every night I wrap myself in his dressing gown and fall asleep on his bed. I emptied the beakers and cups on the table and washed them-God knows I might have poisoned myself from the fumes-wouldn't that be just like him, to kill me after...I've been through every unprotected file on his damn laptop, trying to figure out what _ happened, _what the hell was going on in his _head_ before...I've been in his dirty _laundry_ for all the bloody good it does me-his smell fades more every day, and I just want to keep things as they were, I want to keep them…" He stopped. "Let's just have that tea, shall we? And I'll start a fire, and Mrs. Hudson can bring us some biscuits and it will be _just lovely_." John looked up, straight into Sarah's eyes. "Please."

She raised her hand to wipe the tear from his cheek. "I'll get the kettle started."


	4. Chapter 4

Greg

By the beginning of the second year, John managed to get _his_ adult chemistry set off the kitchen table and into boxes, but couldn't bring himself to donate it. Mrs. Hudson let him keep it in the empty single-room apartment in the basement, and that room eventually came to function as _his_ storage space, the files and papers and clothes and books protected from the damp in plastic tubs, labelled and stacked neatly along the walls. John kept some things out: the dressing gown, which he would not wash, no matter how Mrs. Hudson begged; the bedding, though he finally did consent to washing it once it had turned a mottled grey; the computer, because he could hear _his_ voice in the detailed notes he kept on every subject worth not deleting; the skull, to chat with. And he did chat with it, daily. "Tea?" he'd say, and hear that voice, the one persistently fading from his memory, "White, one sugar." As if he didn't know. As if he hadn't known since the first days they took up residence at 221B.

He began to meet Greg for pints at the corner pub on Thursday afternoons, since neither of them had to work early on Friday and John had a tendency to tip one too many-though only that one night of the week, on Thursdays. He never drank at home, found, through unpleasant trial and error (_experimentation_) that though a few whiskeys might relax him a bit, even put him to sleep, the drink also made his dreams achingly vivid, dreams of being trapped on the ground, his feet stuck in the macadam of the road, reaching desperately toward the man in the back coat on the roof opposite, who reached out toward him before leaping, that great black coat spreading out around him like wings as he fell and fell and struck and John would jerk upright in _his _bed-"No!" his face wet with tears, the pillow soaked with sweat. He stopped drinking at home.

Pints with Greg were easier. John was not alone with his thoughts, and Greg was patient with his endless talk of _him_, his confusion and frustration, and his desperate loneliness. "Greg," he said, one night, three pints in, "the world's _wrong_ without him. It's a stupid, bloody world. Gray. Everything's gray. _He _gave it color-you know what I mean? Am I making any sense? How the _hell_ can the fucking world keep turning? Without him? What's the bloody _point_?"

Greg nodded, and patted his arm. "I know, mate." He signaled to the waitress for another round. "I know." Greg had been to the flat and had removed John's gun while he was traveling-John had railed and raged, but Greg was firm. "Just for now, John," he said. "Just for the time being. I'll give it back, but not right now." Two years on, and Greg was still not quite willing to give it back.

"He'd be so angry at me, being such a sad little _prat_ with my stupid little _feelings. 'Pull yourself together!_' That's what he'd say, but I just _can't_. I go back to the flat and he's everywhere there, in the couch, in the chairs, in the bed, in the damn teakettle and I just don't see the point in another day." John laid his hot forehead on the cool table, tears springing into his eyes unnoticed, running down his cheeks, over his lips, dripping down his chin unchecked.

"I need another beer."

"On its way, mate." Greg tried to remain impassive, knowing from past nights that efforts at comfort would just enrage the grieving man: "It's going to get _easier_? It is _never going to get easier_!" He took John out, nonetheless, every Thursday, to get him out of the flat, to get him talking, to be able to tell Mycroft that John was still breathing. Mycroft had come to his office, shortly after _his_ fatal leap, and asked if he would just keep a bit of an eye on the ex-soldier. "I don't think he has any idea what he's feeling, and certainly he has no idea why he's feeling it. He lost people in the war, Greg, but he's never grieved like he's grieving now. Just watch him. My people will be watching too, but just _talk _to him, let him talk to you." He paused, in his chair on the other side of Greg's desk at Scotland Yard, tapping the bottom of his shoe with his umbrella. "_He_ would never forgive me, even from beyond the grave, if anything happened to John. _He_ would never forgive any of us."

So Greg did, even though every Thursday left him feeling like a wrung-out rag. He kept the gun. And he listened.


	5. Chapter 5

Mycroft

Mycroft sat at the Diogenes Club, sipping his tea, silent as per tradition. It had been over two years and he had had eyes on John at every moment of each day. Cameras around the city turned to follow the gray-blond doctor on his way to the surgery, to the pub, to Sarah's, to the flat. Mycroft's people had noted that John's efforts with Sarah had borne no fruit, and that there had been no women since then, that he only left the flat for work, for the shops, for pints with Greg. They also informed him that the light in John's upstairs room never came on at night, had not come on for years. And that John always looked tired. And that he had lost weight. Mycroft had not seen him. John refused to answer his periodic texts, though he continued to send them.

He sighed, unused to being unable to _fix_ things, to adjust the world to the way he thought best. Which would have been, in this case, John getting on with the business of living. But he only, actually, half-wished that.

He drew his phone from his pocket and sent a brief message: "Any progress?"

The reply came almost instantly. "Yes. Soon."


	6. Chapter 6

Molly

Molly sat on her couch, phone in hand. It was late, almost midnight, but she had been at St. Bart's late, working, and her hair was still wet from her shower, falling around her shoulders in a dark tumble. There was a number on the screen, a number she had never called before, left with her three years ago by a man desperate to be able to say something to someone, but unable to say it, not then.

"Three years," he had said to her, pressing her mobile back into her hands after entering the number. "If you haven't heard from me by then, call this number and tell him just what I told you. I am counting on you, Molly. I trust you to do this for me, you're the only one I can trust to do this for me." Then he kissed her cheek. And was gone.

Now it had been three years, three years today, and she had heard nothing.

Molly hadn't seen John for the entire three years-not that she hadn't wanted to, but she was afraid that the secret she held would be clearly visible in her eyes, and it was essential that the secret be kept. Her mother had always told her, "You just have an honest face, Molly. You'll never be much of a one to keep secrets!" Which was true-her mother always knew when she was lying, or keeping something back. It didn't take _his_ powers of deduction to know what Molly was thinking. So she had kept to herself, kept to her work, had met a nice man who treated her kindly and never told her that her mouth was too small.

A cup of tea steamed on the end table. Molly put the phone on the couch seat and picked up the cup, leaning back and breathing the steam deeply into her lungs, trying to relax.

"How can I tell him?" she thought.

She knew she had to.

She set her cup back down and picked up the phone, pressed "dial" and listened as the connection was made. It rang three times before John picked up.

"Hello?" He sounded sleepy, and a bit stuffy, like he had a cold. Or had been crying.

She looked at the clock on her mantelpiece and noticed how late it was and suddenly felt guilty. Poor man, he might have been sleeping. But, she thought, given the stories she had heard from Greg, probably not.

"Hello?" he said again, and she realized she had been sitting and thinking while he waited for her to respond.

"John!" her voice was loud in her own ears, and she felt flustered. "It's Molly."

"Molly?" There was a pause, as if he was trying to remember who she might be. "Oh, _Molly_. Molly? Why in God's name are you calling so late? Why in God's name are you calling at all? I haven't heard from you in years." He didn't sound annoyed, thank goodness. Just surprised.

Through the phone she could hear him shifting, as if he were sitting up. "Molly. How are you? How have you been? Sorry, I was just half-asleep on the couch. It is late, though. Is there something wrong? Do you need something?"

Tears started in her eyes, suddenly, at the concern in his voice. She had always liked John, the gentle counterbalance to _his_ harshness, almost like the human half of _him_. She felt terrible calling him like this, having to be the one to say words he probably desperately needed to hear, but that also might send him into an even worse emotional tailspin, if that could even be imagined.

She had promised.

"No, no, nothing's wrong," she said. "I'm absolutely fine. I needed to call you. I had some things I needed to tell you. I couldn't tell you them right away. He asked me to wait, to wait until now." She picked up her tea again, and took a fortifying sip. This was going to be terribly hard.

"I'm sorry?" he said. "I'm a little lost here, you'll have to excuse me. _He _asked you to wait? To tell me something?"

"_Sherlock_," she said, and the name dropped like a stone. "_Sherlock_ asked me to tell you something, and asked me to wait until now. Until three years had passed."

"Molly," John said, "What are you talking about?"

She took a deep breath and paused a moment. She could hear him moving about, breathing, waiting. But the thing she had to say, _the important thing that she promised she would say_, just wouldn't come. It was such a private thing, such a powerful thing, so much the thing she had longed to hear _him_ say, but to _her_, even after so long, after three years, she didn't think she would be able to do it.

_Promised_.

She opened her mouth, but her phone buzzed against her cheek. She pulled it away and looked at it. Then she smiled and hung up.


	7. Chapter 7

John

John, wrapped in _his _dressing gown, sat frozen on the couch, his phone glued to the side of his face. No one had said that name to him for three years. No one dared. John had not even said it, he hadn't needed to, when he said _he,_ everyone understood who he was talking about. But here was Molly, dear, quiet Molly, saying it, saying _his name_. _Sherlock_ had told her something, and _Sherlock _had demanded she wait three years before she told John_. _

"Molly," he said through tight lips, "_What are you talking about_?"

He could hear her on the other end of the line, sipping something, probably a cup of tea. His need for the same, pushed to the back of his mind for hours, abruptly became overwhelming and he stood up to put the kettle on. He filled it and set it on the stove, waiting for her to begin speaking again, trying to be patient, trying to understand that passing a message from a long dead man to a desperately grieving man might be difficult for someone as sensitive as Molly-for anyone, for that matter. _Molly? _What had _he_ said to her and when had _he _said it?

John was about to say her name again when he heard an almost imperceptible buzzing, as if Molly had just received a text. There was a moment of nothing. Then she hung up.

In the silence of the house, the sound of the stiff front door lock echoed up the stairs.

The door swung open on squeaky hinges, then shut.

John walked to the middle of the living room. "Mrs. Hudson?" he called. She was supposed to be at her sister's house in Brighton, likely taking a break from John's relentless sadness. "Is that you?"

Footsteps on the stairs.

John wanted desperately to walk to the door of the flat, open it and look down the stairs, but he didn't dare, just stood there with his phone is his hand, listening to the slow approaching tread, much too heavy to be his tiny landlady. He knew who he wanted it to be, who he _needed _it to be-but since that could not possibly be who it was, he continued to stand frozen, continued not to look, if only to allow himself the tiniest measure of hope for as long as possible.

In the kitchen, the kettle came to a boil, whistling brightly, nonsensically normal, through the quiet.

The footsteps paused in front of the door. Then it opened.

A man stood there, silent, in a long black coat. A scarf, in deep and various shades of blue, wrapped around his neck, sharply settling off the pallor of his skin. John couldn't see the color of his eyes in the half-light, but his mind told him they were the palest blue, almost gray, set deeply under dark brows. Hair curled dark around the man's ears and across his forehead.

"Sherlock-" John breathed.

The kettle continued it high-pitched song. The man stepped further into the flat. He opened his mouth. "John-"

John came to life, shaking himself sharply. "You're not _real_!" he bellowed, launching himself across the room at what he knew, he _knew_, could not be Sherlock Holmes, because Sherlock Holmes was _dead_. He reached the man in two steps, the man who could not possibly be real, pulled back his fist, and punched him in the face.

Then John Watson collapsed.


	8. Chapter 8

Come Home

When John came to, the kettle had stopped whistling. He was on the floor of the living room. A pillow under his head. A blanket over his body. How had he gotten here?

He remembered.

"Sherlock?"

"You'd better lie back down. You may have noticed the blanket-that means you're in shock." A voice, an achingly familiar voice, drifted toward him from the vicinity of the kitchen. He heard cups and spoons clinking. "I'm making you some tea, since the water was already hot. I know you like tea after a long day. It has been a long day."

John looked around, slowly, compensating for his strange lightheadedness. The black coat and scarf lay across the chair, across _his_ chair. Across Sherlock's chair. He shook his head, trying to clear it-he was having visions, hallucinations.

The voice spoke again. "I may have to lie down, myself. That was a punch. I imagine you were just trying to prove to yourself I was imaginary." The voice came closer, along with the sound of footsteps.

Sherlock Holmes squatted down next to John, looking at him with sharp eyes. "I suppose it was a shock. Would you like this tea?" He held the steaming cup between both his long, slim hands.

John took the tea and put it on the floor. Then, not looking his dead flatmate in the face, he reached out both his hands and laid them on Sherlock's chest and pushed. Sherlock tipped out of his squat and landed on the floor, but said nothing, simply watching the doctor's face as John convinced himself his best friend was corporeal.

Pushing the blanket away, John raised himself to his knees, his hands never losing contact with the smooth white shirt covering the warm, very much not dead flesh of the man in front of him. He stroked up his chest, firmly, convincing himself, then over the slimly muscled shoulders, and down his arms. He touched the palms and every finger of both hands, finally grasping them in him own, tightly. He still did not look up.

Sherlock, very real, understood the importance of empirical evidence and let John perform his experiment, in fact, enjoying every quiet moment of it, reveling in the touch of the man he had been forced to leave, and who he had thought about every moment while he was ostensibly dead. He looked down at the top of the greying blond head and wanted simply to lay his cheek on it, to feel the soft fine hair on his skin. Instead, though, he felt hot tears on his hands.

"John," he said. "It's pointless for me to apologize. There were no other choices I could make-Moriarty did back me into a corner, though not all the way, of course. I didn't die. But his people needed to think I did. And _you_ needed to think I did, too. So we could both stay alive. I was alive, and I needed to keep you alive, too. But I'm sorry you suffered, no matter how necessary. I know I couldn't have borne it if our places had been switched." He loosened his hands from John's grip and laid them both on his best friend's head. "You are my one and only friend, and the world would be gray and very, very boring without you." Sherlock slid his hands down John's cheeks and under his chin, lifting his face into the light, tracing the tears in the creases around his mouth with gentle fingers. "John?" Sherlock said, "do you hear me?"

John said nothing, but slid forward, wrapping both his arms tightly around Sherlock's chest, resting his head in the hollow between his shoulder and neck. He shook. "Don't do that to me again." his voice was muffled. "Just don't."

Sherlock stiffened slightly-he could not remember ever having had someone, another person, another _body_, so close to him-but then drew the trembling man in, settling him in the nest of his crossed legs. The hair on John's head was as soft against his face as he had imagined, as he had been imagining, all these three years. "No need," he said, breathing in the smell of the man in his lap.

They stayed like that for a long while, the tea cooling in its cup on the floor.


	9. Chapter 9

Awake

Out in city, a bell rang in the distance, its sound carrying clearly through the cold night air. One. Two. Three. John was asleep, his long, slow breathing warming Sherlock's neck. Sherlock's legs were asleep, as well, but he was loathe to move-first of all, not to disturb the man in his lap, who Sherlock knew had not slept in days, weeks, years, but also because the weight of John's body was so comforting, so warm, so grounding. For three years Sherlock had wandered the world, anonymous, methodically searching for and killing Moriarty's people, one after another. A man in Belarus, a woman in China, an entire cell in Brazil-he worked patiently, relentlessly, until he and Mycroft were sure that they were all dead. Until, really, John was safe. That was all that had mattered.

But even with the Work, and it was _real _work, the kind that kept his brilliant mind occupied and his body in motion, even though it was for John, he often felt, laying awake in _this_ hotel room or waiting poised under _that_ dark bridge, a deep sense of absence. Something was missing, and without that something he thought he might just float away. Impossible, of course, that a man could simply float away-ridiculous. Nonetheless, the sense was pervasive-an emptiness, a wide hollow in his chest that colored each successful deduction, that resonated with every bomb set off, every gun fired. He wanted to go home, to John. Because it was John that made him solid, made him whole. If there was such thing as a soul, and Sherlock had his doubts, John kept his. And his heart, always his heart.

He pressed his face into the sleeping man's hair, brushed the top of his head with his lips. Love. Nothing remotely sensible about it. An idea invented during the crusades in an effort to keep wives left behind faithful to their men going off into battle, to assure that children born were indeed legitimate heirs. Something for minstrels to sing about-love, longing, dreaming-perhaps less effective than a chastity belt, but there you have it. Likely many of the children born during the crusades were the sons of those minstrels. But Sherlock had longed for John, for his presence-his sturdy frame, the way he stood with his feet apart and his arms crossed across his broad chest, his head tilted slightly to the side. The way his hair stood on end when he stumbled down the stairs at an ungodly morning hour to demand Sherlock stop playing that damned violin. His intense concentration when he wrote in his blog-wool socks on his feet, cup of tea cooling beside him on the table-his attention far enough away that Sherlock could sit on the couch and watch him for hours without John's even noticing. And he did watch. Always. It was enough, at the time, to simply have John there. John, Sherlock felt then, knew, even, would always be there, would always be in his chair reading a book, at the table writing in his blog, in the kitchen making tea.

Sherlock loved John as well, he supposed, as he could be expected to love anyone. Contrary to what others believed, he did have a heart, he simply kept it hidden, which was, for someone in his line of work, the safest thing to do-love was a weakness, a blind spot. Love was a thing someone could hold over your head, a perfect tool for manipulation, as Sherlock had unfortunately discovered that long ago night at the pool when Moriarty had done him the favor of letting him know exactly how important John was. Criminal mastermind or not, Moriarty was wiser in the ways of love than Sherlock ever had been-had been able to see exactly what Sherlock had not, and likely could not have, seen on his own.

If he had died out there, in Belarus, in China, in Brazil, the only thing he would have regretted was that he hadn't ever said anything to John.

That was Molly's job. "Tell him," Sherlock said to her, punching John's mobile number into her phone's memory. "Tell him," he said to her, looking into her wide and honest eyes. "Tell him," he said, "that I love him, Molly. Just that one thing. But not now, you have to wait." He laid his hand on her shoulder and could feel her trembling. "Give me three years to get this job done. If you haven't heard from me in three years, you must tell him. You are the only one I can trust to do this for me, Molly, and it is the most important thing I could ask anyone to do."

She nodded, he remembered. She stopped trembling, squared her shoulders like a good little soldier. She _got it_. And reassured, he kissed her cheek and swept out of the morgue, whole, intact, _alive_.

She did not, in the end, have to tell John _just that one thing._ Sherlock tightened his arms, pulling John deeper into the curve of his body. He thought about it, his beautiful mind racing. She did not tell John that Sherlock loved him. So Sherlock would have to do it himself_._

And as he sat there, listening to the sounds of trucks beginning their morning delivery rounds on the streets below (engine, pause, clatter, pause, engine), he considered that blowing up a terrorist cell in Brazil might have been the easier task.


	10. Chapter 10

Begin Again

John was dreaming. He dreamed that Sherlock had come home, come home to him, finally, after all these years. He dreamed that his best friend had come back from the dead. He dreamed that the man he had longed for every day, every moment, was holding him, his, _Sherlock's_, strong and wiry arms wrapped around him, his breath warm on the crown of his head, on his cheek. The dream was perfect, and real, and lovely. He wanted to slip deeper into sleep, to never wake up again. He wanted to keep feeling the softest curls of hair on his face as he burrowed deeper into the sweet-smelling curve of Sherlock's neck and shoulder. He wanted to curl up smaller, like a child, and tighten his arms around that slim torso. John was dreaming.

John was awake.

And he opened his eyes.

And he was not dreaming.

"Sherlock?" He tried to lift his head, but a strong slim hand pressed it down again.

"Not yet," that voice said. "Don't move quite yet. Please."

John was not averse to following this instruction. He was warm, and held, and safe. "You're home."

He felt the muscles in Sherlock's throat move as the man smiled. "I am home. I'm surprised you haven't started yelling at me yet-well you did, but then you fainted, so it hardly counts." A kiss, on his head, barely there, but a kiss nonetheless. "I missed you, you know," Sherlock said. "Every day. I thought about you every day. I wondered what you were doing and who you were seeing, and I wanted so much for you to be all right. You wouldn't answer Mycroft's texts, and all the things Greg told him-they sounded, how would you say it?-less than good."

John sat up, against the resistance of the arms that held him. He slid off Sherlock's lap onto the floor and turned to face his best friend, whose voice and words carried things that he hadn't ever expected to hear, things John hadn't even known he wanted to hear. He mirrored Sherlock's position on the floor, and sat looking at him, their knees touching lightly. He reached up his hand to stroke the cheek of the man he had never expected to see again. "I am so angry," he said. "_So bloody angry _that you lied to me, that you put me through that. I almost died of it, Sherlock. I almost died of _missing you_." John took a deep breath. "And right now, I don't know if I want to kill you or kiss you."

There was a pause.

"Kiss me?" said Sherlock, his eyes on his hands. "Does that seem to be a viable option?"

"Three years ago, I don't know," John's hand wandered up into dark curls, feeling how soft they were, wrapped around his fingers. "I don't know if _this_ is a place I would have got to. Honestly. But it stripped me bare, Sherlock. Even the damn war didn't hit me so hard-_losing you was losing everything_."

He rose to his knees, his fingers tightening just a bit in Sherlock's hair, just enough so John could tilt his head back, could see those grey-blue eyes. "But now, really, I think it is. Quite viable."

"I concur." Sherlock reached up both hands and pulled John's face closer, until their mouths were almost touching. For one brief moment the world stood still, and John felt Sherlock's breath quick and hot on his lips, then his best friend, his dead friend, his heart and soul, closed the gap between them.


End file.
